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I'm going to be updating this blog regularly soon. Lately there have been a lot of things that have come up with friends of mine, and I feel that if I'm writing about them, then I can find out things myself.

Here, I'm going to be talking about Catholic related topics only. I have other blogs specific to other topics, like entertainment, health, design, Narnia and more.

GregMarone, a user of this site from the Chicagoland area is hoping to start one! Check out his post in the forums! I hope that he is able to accomplish this, as more great Catholic bands are something that I'm looking forward to hearing from!

Last weekend, I went to a Youth Ministry conference on "Prayer and Praise."

It was a really cool way to learn about prayer and creating prayer sessions for meetings and retreats. We also learned how to plan for things based on specific topics. It's crazy how much we learned in just two days. The facilitator, Stan Cordero, was awesome and had everything well laid out.

This was the first of an 8 session course that I would LOVE to be able to finish up. We'll see!

It's been a busy year since the trip to Ireland. Lots has happened, and lots more is still to come, I am sure.

I hope to have a chance to start really hammering out the changes to this website to make it a hopping place to be, but we'll see. Hopefully, 2008 will be the year that this site starts moving in a direction to take off.

If you've read the previous entry about our absolutely incredible Hotel stay, you have some idea of what I'm talking about. Each day, when entering the bathroom, I would notice that the tissue was a bit disheveled. It looked like someone had accidentally taken a few too many tissues out of the box and tried shoving the rest back in.

This is a phrase that I coined early on in our trip when we really discovered how wonderful our hotel in Ireland was....

Granted, any hotel with a name like The Great Southern Dublin AIRPORT Hotel, is not going to be the most expensive or best accommodation. In fact, it was the cheapest to be found rated at three and a half stars, so we took our chances....

Today was indeed our last day to see the hustle and bustle of Dublin, ride the wonderful and long public transportation, and see the rolling green hills. But, we did all of these! It was a long day, full of fun which taught me a few things...

1. Don't rely on public transportation to make a fast and speedy trip

2. Check times of the attractions you want to see (again, refer to number one)

3. Try different Irish foods when you are here, it will be worth it whether you like it or not

Alas, our last full day in Ireland was today, but it was a great day. We spent a few hours of the morning in and around downtown Dublin before our bus departed for Glendalough, home of the Wicklow Mountains National Park. The ride to the park was beautiful as we saw the rolling hills and grassy plains of the Irish countryside, full of sheep, horses, and cows. The scenery we saw today was much more accurate to the images that come to my mind when I think of Ireland and was a nice escape from the bustling city of Dublin.